Don’t play Wheel of Fortune with your health

Sometimes it feels like we are playing a game of Wheel of Fortune when it comes to our health. In which we spin the wheel with our eating habits hoping that it won’t negatively affect our health.

So how do we get to a point where we can gain complete control over what we eat?

We do it with effective, proven, and practical strategies that eventually turn into healthy habits. These five strategies allowed my wife and I to eat “healthy” enough and below our means that we were able to lose 50lbs in total.

1. Look up the menu beforehand

Anytime my wife and I go out to eat we always check out the menu online. More often than not they will have the calories displayed or substitutes listed. Not only does this allow us to track our calories, it helps reduce decision fatigue. From experience, if we wait to decide what we are going to eat at a restaurant we will go off emotion and pick the least healthier option.

2. What’s for lunch?

Before going on a diet I used to skip lunch, either because I was too busy or because I forgot to bring food to work. Although I could get through the day not eating by the time I got home I was starving! Slowly but surely this bad habit is what caused my weight gain. When I went on this diet I had to figure out ways to make sure I was eating something for lunch that was healthy. At the beginning of my diet, I started cooking extra food at dinner the night before, I would pack the leftovers for lunch the next day. This helped me reduce binge eating at dinner and it also effectively stopped me from eating fast food as a lunch option.

3. Meals Ready-to-Eat

This is by far the best strategy I’ve used for losing weight. At the end of my diet, I got tired of cooking all the time. So I began looking at various options online of companies that would deliver healthy meals to my home. I decided to go with CleanEatz. Not only did this save me prep time, it provided variety that I wasn’t getting in my diet. The meals were affordable at about $6/meal. This worked well because I knew exactly what I was eating, how many calories I was consuming, and it gave me confidence that I was eating something healthy.

4. Teamwork makes the dreamwork

There’s no way I could have done this without my wife. She’s actually the one that took the initiative for starting this weight loss journey. She always communicated with me about different recipe ideas we could try. We were always stocked up with healthy options at home. The best part was that by dieting together our relationship grew stronger because we continued to support each other during the process.

5. Eliminate The Big 3

I have no control when it comes to eating bread, rice, or pasta, especially rice. I joke to my friends that I’ve been eating rice since I was in my mother’s womb. On the other hand, Ashley loves pasta and can eat more than any other man or woman I’ve ever seen eat pasta. Instead of trying to pretend that we could WILL ourselves not to eat it, we eliminated it from the house totally. In order to still get our carb fix, one night a week we would go to a restaurant that served either of these ingredients and ate it without guilt. Why not?! We earned it! But we also knew that when we came home we wouldn’t any more of it. This helped us eat foods that we enjoyed without overconsumption of highly processed foods.

Conclusion

You have more control over what you eat than you think. Using these tips and strategies will keep you consistent along your weight loss journey. Just like it did for us. The only game of Wheel of Fortune I want you playing is the one on tv, in which you win a “brand new carrrrrr”!